


Blind Man's Mare

by Grondfic



Category: Annan Water (ballad), The Lochmaben Harper (ballad)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 13:56:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18012203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grondfic/pseuds/Grondfic
Summary: The Blind Harper's curse on those who took his grey mare, leads to tragedy and the severing of two lovers.





	Blind Man's Mare

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The text of _Annan Water_ , which contains the outline of the tale, can be found here -  
> http://grondfic.livejournal.com/13450.html#cutid1
> 
> 2\. The further adventures of the Blind Harper and his mare can be found here -  
> http://www.bartleby.com/243/144.html

This was the manner of it with the kelpie:

The water surface, hitherto calm, became agitated into multiple folds that gradually took on shape, then bulk, then independent movement. Droplets spun and achieved cohesion. The whole mass moved shorewards, shrieking. It ripped itself from its element with an anguished roar.

A horse stood on the steep bank; a coal-black horse with eyes of crimson flame. It shook itself (careful not to fling too much of its essence away), tossed its wild watery mane, and took to the earth. Grass blades cut its delicate unshod feet like tiny daggers, and it wailed once more as it threw its long head into the turbulent air, seeking with pricked ear and wide nostril for what had called it up this time.

****

_“And he has ridden o'er field and fell,  
o'er moor and moss and many a mire”_

Daft Wat urged his mount on at an insane speed. He must put distance between himself and Da, or there’d be hell to pay. He’d done the unforgivable – borrowed his father’s best mare to carry him into the storm on a perilous enterprise!

Da had reived the mare from that blind musician in Lochmaben. Men had muttered about that; but Da had said the Ould One owed him black maile, so it was his right to take the horse instead. It was whispered that the Ould One had then laid a Curse on whoever rode her; but that hadn’t bothered Da – so it wouldn’t bother Wat either!

The mare was famous for knowing her way around this landscape of moss, mire, fen and dubious alliances. That’s why Wat had picked her. He might be kenned Daft by his family, but even he could work out that a blind-man’s mare would surefoot it through even the worst ground.

He tugged uselessly at the bridle as the mare gave a sudden lurch. She must have one hoof in a coney-hole; and it needed everything that spur, and then whip, could do to get her free again. Her breath was coming in steamy snorts; and he hoped she would last the course. He MUST get across the Border tonight. His lover was waiting!

* * * *

The black water-horse stilled. It had smelled The Curse; and now it let its nostrils guide it. It had no Self as such: merely this thrilling sense of Something To Be Rectified. And now also …. the intoxicating flavour of Female Horse …..

* * * *

_“and my love Annie is wondrous bonny”_

Daft Wat (who considered himself maybe not so Daft) had allowed Them all to think he was night-visiting in the usual way – “Bonnie Annie!” he’d said to all prurient enquiries, “Over Annan Water!”

His friends – cousins and young tenantry – had sniggered (thinking English Bitch); but in fact the object of Wat’s adolescent desire was the youngest son of the March Warden at Carlisle Castle. 

* * * *

Back in Annan Keep, the Laird smiled a left-handed smile at the under-groom.

“He’s took the mare, then?”

“Aye!”

“Daft Wat! He’s well-kenned indeed. Too daft to note that no-one’s laid leg over the jade since I brought her in! A good mare, they say! Good enough to wander back hersel’ if necessary. If The Curse takes hold – well, I’ve other sons: sons who don’t go playing the whore with the English! And if not – well, none’s the wiser, eh?”

* * * *

_“The spurs o steel were sair to bide,  
And frae the mare’s feet flew the fire.”_

The mare was unused to such treatment. The Not-Eye Man and His Mate had valued her help; and had never laid whip to her rump, nor used the Hurting-Rakes on her flanks. This Young One now on her back had no Care.

The ground beneath her hoofs was Bad too. The Not-Eyed had kept to the straight ways where Two-Leg homes could be found; but This One was forcing her to unfamiliar, unsafe Ragged Places and Deep Wets where her hoofs might slip on grey stone or catch in coney-holes. 

The scents on the rushing air were more intense here. They called to her from many multi-layered directions, and she ran Confused and beyond her Easy Speed. Her nose told her, too, that ahead lay the Shrieking Water.

In a word (had she known it) the mare was Unhappy.

* * * *

Daft Wat swore, his anger swallowed up in the ceaseless roar of a river in spate. He’d called and called at the boatman’s hut; but the man could not, or would not hear him. 

Daft Wat had a streak of obstinacy not-so-well-hidden inside him. He was young; he was fit. And the mare was a good one. To turn back now would be to break his word; and would bring shame and derision on him.

There was nothing for it! He must try to find a place to swim the mare across.

* * * *

The mare was beyond frenzy, and into a glazed ecstasy of terror and desire. No whip or spur would reach her now; no human voice could possibly command her. 

Clear before her stood the Kelpie, his head thrown back upon his serpentine neck; his mane wind-and-water blown. He screamed with the very voice of the river. Droplets of cold rage and hot desire shook from him; and she was scorched and frozen in the wash of him.

She planted herself, all four feet sunk into the wet earth of the bank. She sweated and shivered; snortled bloody foam, and screamed herself. But she would not be moved.

* * * *

Madness had come over Daft Wat, although he was unaware of the fact. He dismounted angrily and swore once more at the mare. If the jade would not go for him, then curse it, he must swim! The roar of the water had entered him, blood, bone and soul; and he knew with certain knowledge that he could master it, as he had mastered the mare. 

Throwing off his coat (the best one, with real silver buttons winking in the fitful moonlight), he cast around with a long branch to find a safe bottom at what he thought was the stream-tail-ford. There was a stretch where the water seemed slower, calmer, more even.

Daft Wat plunged in, using the branch to wade at first; then striking out, as the bottom fell away beneath his feet. It felt almost as if his path was laid out before him in a shining shaft of moonlight. The strength in his arms was limitless! His breath was steady. This night, the water was his friend! He was in his own element!

The further bank drew steadily nearer. Daft Wat gasped another lungful of air and … it was as if he had been dropped from a mighty sheltering hand. He found himself just beyond the far shallows, struggling for a purchase beneath his feet that never came. His arms were water-soaked, like laundry-blankets; heavy and motion-stopped. He could not feel his legs at all.

Desperately, he tried to free one arm, and clutch at the overhanging branch of a willow-tree that had grown aslant the bank, far out across the stream. The Curse – refined now to his exact dimensions - allowed his grasping, numb fingers to tear a slender twig from its mooring. The long delicate leaves wrapped consolingly around his hand as he sank beneath the surface, and was claimed by the deep current beneath.

* * * *  
The sound inched lower until it became bearable; simply the muted mutter and tinkle of a river coming down from spate. The black horse, held in shape now solely by its desires, moved gently to nose the mare’s flank. Soon she was streaked dark with water; and very receptive…

* * * *

The mating was both reward and completion for the black horse. The mare was as intimately bound into the fabric of the Curse as a fly-wing into a spider web; and thus to mate with her laid the final strands of it into a completed pattern. The Kelpie gave one last shriek – a final ecstasy – before deliquescing direct from her back and hindquarters into its parent stream; reuniting almost silently with its own essence.

* * * *

The mare – dripping wet, chafed by the soaked leather of saddle and bridle, galvanised by terror and sex – turned away from the water and began the long business of finding her true instinct back to the place she knew best.

* * * *

“Ould One! Come quick! The Mare’s back!”

“Is it so? Leave her be, then, till I see to her!”

The Harper’s apprentice (also groom and general factotum) backed off in some relief as the mare, wild-eyed and haggard, reared up to battle the air with her forefeet.

“What’s all this, eh, ma Bonnie? Whisht, now, ye’re come hame. And glad I am to see ye, ma doo! Ah, there’s a powerful stink o’ water-glamour on ye! Aye, and the Curse discharged! There’s a wild ride behind ye, lass, wi’ moss and muir; bank, braie, and a scent of willow-wand. And the magic laid o’er all …. “

* * * *

The mare shuddered to an exhausted halt, and let the Not-Eye handle her as he would. She was accustomed to his ways, after all. She nuzzled somewhat forlornly into his neck as he passed quiet hands over her, sniffing at mane, flank, and even rump, as was his wont.

* * * *

A blind man must use what senses he has; and the Harper’s main mode of knowing the world was via smell. (The sense of Touch was given over entirely to his uncompromising Mistress, The Harp, with its cruel metal-and-gut strings against which his sensitive craftsman’s fingers had been tempered, and broken, and tempered once more. Now he made music to ravish the hearer’s soul from his acquiescent carcase; but at the cost of his own feeling).

So, in default of eyes and touch, the Harper smelled out the story of the mare and her Curse. He caught Daft Wat quite soon; tutted over the lad’s unthinking cruelty to the horse, but sighed softly at the scent of incongruity, of a slot-not-fitted, of love left-handed.

He nosed out the local politics – how the Boatman had been bribed to deafness by a distant cousin who (only semi-innocently) sought to detach Daft Wat from his English allegiance. There would be covert tears over that, later today!

There was the Laird too – wreaking his sly experiment upon the boy; half sure that nothing would happen; half resigned to the loss, if it did. There’d be no call to commiserate; the Laird would not welcome it. 

He himself was hardly innocent in the matter. If he’d only paid the black maile on time … and not laid such a wide-ranging Curse …

The Harper drew all the strings of his burnt-out Curse together, took all the multitude of little blames into himself into One Transcendent Blame; and slowly began the long task of transmuting it into the sound of harp and voice.

* * * *

_“…And over you I’ll build a bridge  
That nevermore true love may sever”_

Requiem complete, the Harper called his apprentice, and bade him travel to Carlisle Town, there to seek out Scrope-the-Youngest, and sing to him this new-minted tale of Annan Water. He felt it his duty to inform the lover of his beloved’s fate, since it was likely that no one else would think to do so.

Finally he fed the mare – wondrous richly - on half of the black meal he’d finally collected for the Laird’s fee; and resolved to visit Annan Keep in the near future.

* * * *

The grey mare picked her way heavily along a vaguely-remembered path. The Not-Eye Man had let her alone to choose her own gait this morning; yet she felt an impulse from him that this was the way to go.

She had been here before. There would be food – more plentiful than with the Not-Eye – in that building. With a blithe lack of loyalty, the mare started over that way.

A couple of Washing and Feeding men popped up, but she evaded them with ease. There were random shoutings, and she danced a little, uneasily. However, the Not-Eye’s light touch and softly-spoken word brought her to a halt soon. He swung from her back and told her to stand, before leaving her and moving slowly in the Noise-direction.

* * * *

“What brings ye here, Ould One?”

“The mare, I believe. She seemed so inclined; and what can a puir blind harper do if the jade be so set in her path?”

The Laird came leisurely down the stone stair of his keep and picked his way across the uneven courtyard to where the Harper stood, head cocked and sharp nose pointed into the breeze.

“Do I ride safe here, Laird of Annan? T’would be shame to lose the mare a second time!”

“Na, na! She’s safe from me and mine, Man! The Harper’s Word runs fast in my lands - now!”

“I’m glad to hear’t,” responded the blind man peaceably, “We ha trouble enow with English loons, wi’out the killin’ o' one another. I’m gey sorry to hear of y’r Wat! Thy sorrow is my sorrow!” he ended formally.

“Is it indeed? Well – I’ve more sons; and I mysel’ had no desire to test the strength of your Word.”

The blind man nodded his lion-like head slowly.

“Och well, ‘tis a dowie river, the Annan. An’ here’s my guid mare, come back to me in foal, the wanton jade! Wha knows the getting’ o’ THAT colt, eh? If yer fellow there but stoop to look in the saddle-bag, he’ll find the Maile as promised. A little late mebbe, and a little short, but enough found, I’m thinking!”

The Laird looked at the Harper – upright still despite his age, and with strands of bright brown still showing in the fading hair. He opened his mouth to remit the Maile; but thought better of it. A bargain was a bargain, after all. And he HAD lost a son in the making of it.

“Ye’ll break bread with us?” he asked instead, “And maybe … a song, if ye’re inclined?”

“If it be y’re pleasure, Laird of Annan. Mebbe ye’d lead me in?”

“It wad be my honour Ould One!” replied the Laird, approaching the Harper.

The man’s brown, gnarled hand was rough with calluses. His fingertips felt like oaken twigs beneath the Laird’s palm. He’d have lost feeling there – a bane for a blind man, who must rely on ears and hands to know his own dark world. A high price to make the music, then! It came to him suddenly why the Curse had been so strong. To take the mare would be to take the Harper’s direction-finder; his mobility.

If a hardened border-reiver could feel shame, the Laird felt it then. And the shame itself shamed him. His grip on the Harper’s hand faltered and his breath came out in a suppressed snort like a sow in farrow.

“Ne’er heed it, man!” the Harper’s voice murmured in his ear, “We live by the turn of the trick – mysel’ and yersel’ both. I sent word to the boy in Carlisle!”

“Guid! Let him share the grief! There’ll be a cup o’ good French wine in my solar, if ye’ve a mind to it!”

“I have a thirst on me!” admitted the blind man, “And – “ he added after a deliberate pause, “An itch that needs a scratch.”

The Laird glanced sidelong at the serene, blank face at his side.

“Is it so? Then mebbe we should discuss … an alliance … at our leisure, Ould One.”

“T’will be my pleasure indeed.”


End file.
